AN AWARD-WINNING family food firm is celebrating more business success.

Heck makes premium sausages, burgers and meatballs from its base near Bedale and has been announced as the fourth fastest growing private company in the UK and the top-ranked Yorkshire company in the annual Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100.

The league table ranks Britain’s private companies with the fastest-growing sales.

Heck is one of six Yorkshire companies to again appear in the table and has maintained its fourth place nationally and first place regionally.

The company was founded by husband and wife team, Andrew and Debbie Keeble, and three of their children in 2013, and its products are now stocked in all of the major supermarkets.

Sales have grown 170 per cent a year to £11.2 million this year. The firm is now the UK’s number one premium sausage brand and is on track to generate £18 million turnover next year.

Heck prides itself on the quality of its products – which now include a meat-free range – and now has a 40 per cent market share in the high end category.

One of the last independents in the British sausage industry, it sells double the volume of its closest competitor, despite charging £1 more per kilo.

Products include pork sausages, square sausages for the BBQ, a lower fat chicken range, seasonal variants such as Christmas Baubles and new veggie and vegan sausages, balls and burgers.

Jamie Keeble, company co-founder, said: “We don’t try and make the same products as everyone else and this is what sets us apart from our competitors. We also listen to what our customers want and can be quick to bring new, innovative and healthier versions of favourite foods to the supermarket shelves.

“Our ranking in this year’s Fast Track is a feather in the cap for our whole team who are passionate about making good food and bringing it to as many people across the country as possible.”

Next year Heck will open its new food factory on the site of the old family farm, featuring state of the art machinery capable of producing 700 sausages a minute. It will also include a “sausage world” to give consumers an insight into the production of the humble banger.